The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has urged Zimbabweans to continue using the dual currency system saying the country has no capacity to fully dollarise.
Speaking during the Chamber of Mines of Zimbabwe Annual conference in Victoria Falls, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Dr. John Mangudya said Zimbabweans should work together to protect the local currency to reduce inflation.
“Some believe that if they continuously attack the currency, they will force people to go into dollarisation, and we are being pushed to a place where there is nothing and where there is suffering. We have been there before.
“This country has no capacity to dollarise all the balances, if we continue like this, we will have a supermarket economy. This economy has done very well in terms of increasing capacity utilisation, in terms of local production, and let’s not destroy what we have built over the past years.
“It will reduce all the gains that this economy has made over the past years. Let’s continue to work together and l am appealing to business leaders that let’s work together in harmony and if we do that we will succeed.
“When we say partial dollarisation, don’t think that we don’t use the United States dollar, we will use it and we need to continue doing that.
“In English they say a bird in hands is better than two in the bush, use your own foreign currency and let others use the local currency and don’t undermine them,” he said.
He added that if these issues are not addressed, the 2023 $12 billion mining industry will be difficult to reach.
“We had dollarisation before and it had its own problems, we don’t have easy access to foreign currency. The problem is Zimbabweans always complain saying things are hard, but there is nowhere in the world that things are easy or simple.
“l heard when Biden was speaking, about the shortage of formula for babies saying they don’t have resources to produce it and that’s how difficult the whole world is.
“Let’s just be positive and l can assure you that this economy if we don’t deal with these things, the 2023 vision will be difficult to reach because people will be demolarised.
“We want to tame inflation and together we can do it, it’s not the Reserve Bank activity alone, it’s not the government’s activity alone, it’s ours as a team Zimbabwe because people who are doing this are business people.
“This game needs people who are patriotic and it’s not political. So l am saying that dual currency is the most appropriate model of payment to use in this economy,” he said.
